Providing for Consideration of HR 1905, District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007 and Providing for Consideration of HR 1906, Estimated...
Floor Speech
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 1905, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA HOUSE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 2007 AND PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 1906, ESTIMATED TAX PAYMENT SAFE HARBOR ADJUSTMENT
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank the gentleman for his strong advocacy for the rights of all Americans.
I must begin by saying when you hear people come to the floor and invoke the word ``fairness'' in a debate where they oppose the basic right to vote, they drain that word of all of its meaning.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the rule proper. I would like to offer some thanks during this rule period. And I would like to say a word about Utah, our very strong partner about whom we hear little because they are so far away.
The other side, after the last vote on this bill, clucked that they had actually stopped our people in the Nation's Capital from getting a vote. Imagine how that was received all around the world. Now they come to the floor with the nerve to object to the procedure.
Mind you, the substance is really what they are after. If in fact the District of Columbia was a largely Republican city, these Members would be on the floor arguing for voting rights for the District of Columbia just as the radical Republican abolitionists gave us the vote, which was then taken from us, and gave us home rule.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. NORTON. I will not yield, sir. The District of Columbia has spent 206 years yielding to people who would deny them the vote. I yield you no ground, not during my time. You have had your say, and your say has been that you think that the people who live in your capital are not entitled to a vote in their House. Shame on you.
Then they want an open rule. They want an open rule so they can deny the vote. The American people will have nothing but praise for the Democratic leadership because the Democratic leaders have found a way to observe two cardinal principles, the principle most basic of all, the right to vote, yes, the principle of fiscal responsibility.
Now, the Democrats could never have thrown the foul ball that was used to delay this bill, and the reason is, of course, that the other side spent 12 years building a deficit and didn't observe the PAYGO rule, and so there would have been no germaneness issue. I don't think that was so smart.
The bill was open to an outrageous attempt to repeal our gun laws. We are a free people. We are entitled to have the same jurisdiction over our gun laws they have, and we are going to insist on it. And the Democratic leaders did not bow to that trick. Instead, they went back and found a way to keep to the principle of finally paying for what we do, as you should have done for more than 10 years.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, for more than 4 years, thousands of Americans and others around the world have sought this bill and contributed ideas, time and effort, beginning with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who added to her long and unequivocal push for full rights for District citizens, her personal attention and intervention when it counted most to move this bill forward. And majority leader Steny Hoyer, whose outspoken dedication to our rights overcame procedural malevolence to bring today's bill forward. However, the idea originally came from the Republican side. When I was in the minority, moved by his personal sense of right and wrong, Congressman Tom Davis smartly and doggedly started us down the bipartisan path to equal votes for the District and for Utah.
Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers, since his election in 1964, has robustly argued that rights for D.C. residents must match their burdens. Henry Waxman, first as ranking member, now as Chair, began leading a principled effort for equal rights for D.C. citizens long before I was elected to Congress.
Utah Governor John Huntsman, and the Utah delegation, Representatives Bishop, Cannon and Matheson, forged a unique partnership on their understanding that Utah and D.C. residents felt the same sense of loss and should obtain these precious rights together.
The local and national civil rights organizations formed themselves into a formidable D.C. voting rights coalition, led by D.C. Vote, which gave the effort, organizational know-how and boundless dedication, and the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, which has carried D.C. voting rights as a major civil rights cause for decades.
The official international human rights entities abroad have gone on record to ask the United States of America to conform with international law by granting voting rights to the citizens of its capital. My own colleagues of both parties, who passed this bill in committees by overwhelming votes, 29-4, 24-5 and 21-13, especially my Republican colleagues, have joined this effort for the District of Columbia and for Utah out of principle.
The District of Columbia's four home rule mayors and city councils, particularly current Mayor Adrian Fenty and City Council Chair Vincent Gray, and, most especially, the residents of this city, living and dead, have fought for equal citizenship over the ages.
Today, we will get the vote I predict, at least in the House.
Mr. Speaker, I give great praise to a State which is the most Republican State in the Union for having unabashedly and continuously joined with us out of a deep sense of grievance of its own, that its missionaries, temporarily abroad in the service of their church, were not counted in the last census, and, thus, the State was deprived of a seat that they believed they were entitled to.
I would like to quote Governor John Huntsman, the Governor of the State, who came and said, ``I have not extensively studied the constitutionality of the D.C. House Voting Rights Act, but I am impressed and persuaded by the scholarship represented. The people of Utah have expressed outrage over the loss of one congressional seat for the last 6 years. I share their outrage. I can't imagine what it must be like for American citizens to have no representation for over 200 years.''
We will pass this bill today. We will put it in the hands of two Republican Senators from Utah, Senators Hatch and Bennett, and there I believe it will fare well, because the people of Utah want this vote, their vote, as much as we want our vote.
I ask, in testament to that, that two editorials from the Salt Lake Tribune be included for the Record.
[From the Salt Lake Tribune, Mar. 13, 2007]
Utah's 4th Seat: One Quibble Aside, New Bill Would Do the Right Thing
It's back. A bill before Congress would give the District of Columbia its first voting member of the House of Representatives and Utah its fourth seat in that body. We favor it because Utah's rapidly growing population is entitled to a fourth seat. There are things about the bill that could be better, but the overriding principles are right. The 600,000 people of the District of Columbia have a delegate in the House but she cannot vote on the floor, That's a cruel irony in a nation that fancies itself a beacon of republican democracy.
That situation is an accident of constitutional history. The founders fashioned D.C. so that no state would have the advantage of being the seat of the federal government. But it is the states, under the Constitution's language, that elect U.S. representatives and senators. For more than 200 years, that circumstance has denied the people of D.C. votes in Congress.
This bill would rectify that by treating D.C. as a congressional district for purposes of representation in the House. At the same time, it would increase the membership of the House from 435 to 437. One seat would go to D.C. The second would go to the next state in line for another seat because of population growth, i.e., Utah. The reason for this second provision is to preserve the existing partisan balance in the House. D.C. presumably will elect a Democrat. Utah presumably will elect a Republican.
Our major quibble with the bill, H.R. 1433, is that it would have Utah elect its new member-at-large, that is, statewide, rather than by congressional district, until after the 2010 census and reapportionment. We believe that is a mistake because it would allow every Utah voter to vote for two members of the House while every other voter in the U.S. could vote for only one.
Besides, the Utah Legislature last year created four equal congressional districts in anticipation of an earlier version of this bill which failed in the last Congress.
The at-large proposal would spare Utah's sitting members of the House from running in special elections to fill the four new seats. While that is a real hardship in terms of fundraising, it would be worthwhile to preserve the principle of equal representation.
The quibble: The bill would have Utah elect its new member at large, that is, state-wide, rather than by congressional district, until after the 2010 census and reapportionment.
--
[From the Salt Lake Tribune, Dec. 7, 2006]
Captive Capital: No Constitutional Bar to D.C. Representation
How can it be unconstitutional to give some 600,000 American citizens--tax-paying, military-serving citizens literally living in the shadow of the Capitol dome--the right to vote for some representation in Congress.
Only a tortured, neocolonial reading of the Constitution would conclude that we should exclude the people who live in the Federal City from the representation that all other Americans take for granted.
OK, so that's the reading that has carried the day for 200 years. That doesn't make it right.
A last-gasp effort to stick to that thinking, if it hadn't quickly died on the floor of the Utah House Monday, could have jeopardized the deal to give Utah its well-deserved fourth seat in Congress by denying the quid pro quo of the first-ever seat for the District of Columbia.
The deal is dead for now anyway, lost in the crush of last minute, lame-duck congressional business. The Utah Legislature's approval of four prospective congressional districts still matters, though, as the issue may arise next year.
Either way, people who claim to live by the U.S. Constitution should read past its third paragraph.
Sticking to the notion that people in Washington can't be represented in Congress because they don't live in one of ``the several states'' places text above meaning.
Other constitutional provisions, ranging from the vague clause that gives Congress exclusive power over a federal district to the equal protection and voting rights provisions of the 14th and 15th Amendments, also matter. Read together, they leave little excuse for the taxation without representation that D.C. residents have suffered almost since the beginning of the Republic.
In arguing for an independent federal zone for the national capital, something that was thought necessary to ensure that no state would gain an unfair advantage over the others by having the seal of federal power in its back pocket, James Madison's Federalist No. 43 simply took it for granted that the rights of that district's inhabitants would be protected. They weren't.
A 2000 Supreme Court ruling held that the situation was unfair to D.C. residents, but that the courts had no power to remedy that, it was up to Congress, with its exclusive power over the District, to grant relief.
Congress should still consider just that.
Only 200 years late.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I respect the gentleman, who indeed has, as always, given me and the city respect, and I know he understands what it must be like to be in the Congress for 17 years and come to the floor and see people debating your budget and your laws and you can't even vote on them.
I appreciate that the gentleman came to the floor on procedural matters. If the differences between the gentleman and me are on procedure, would not the better side of valor be to allow people on both sides to understand that you favor voting rights; and if your problem is constitutionality, I am sure the gentleman will understand that there is a third branch of government who can decide this matter for us both, particularly since he concedes that opinion on the constitutional question is divided.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman argues about an unprecedented procedure. What about the unprecedented procedure that the other side used to delay this bill, sending the message around the world to delay this bill when it was delayed the last time?
This procedure is legal. Therefore, if you want to use procedure to stop the bill, you should say so. The fact is you have raised a constitutional point. You are not a constitutional scholar, and no Member of this House is, even I, who was a constitutional lawyer.
Therefore, when in doubt about something as precious as the right to vote, when the people we are talking about have paid taxes and have gone to war since the birth of the Republic, surely we should err on the side of encouraging everybody to vote for the bill, send it to the Senate, and let the one institution that can decide constitutional questions, the Supreme Court, make that decision.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. NORTON. Reclaiming my time, it is certainly true that the vote was delayed and it was legal to delay it. By delaying the vote, do you know what the leaders of this House did? They saved the reputation of this House throughout the world. No one knows what would have happened. But no vote on guns occurred.
You don't know what would have happened.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. NORTON. I can understand why the Members on that side don't want to be spoken to directly.
Nobody knows what would have been the result of that vote. The least of all who know is the other side.
One thing we do know is that it was a perversion. It would have been a perversion to even allow a vote about guns, a vote about guns that would have deprived the District of its own right to decide the issue in order to decide whether it should have a vote.
The decision therefore to pull the bill was legal and the delay saved the principle that we should be voting on one basic right, the basic right that is before us today in the House Voting Rights Act.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Ms. NORTON. When the Constitution was written, first of all, Senators weren't popularly elected; they were appointed, not elected, number one. Number two, when the Constitution was written there was a 10-year period during which the District essentially had all the same rights it had always had because the Framers guaranteed to Maryland and Virginia they would not lose those rights. So when the seat moved over and it became the jurisdiction of the Congress, only the Congress could fulfill the mandate now that the city was under its jurisdiction to grant the city the right to vote.
We are asking for the right to vote only in the House. And the Senate, somebody would have had to appoint Senators at the time. So that could not have been done.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source